, by count of the shells afterward, and all the world knows now of
the desperate and successful fight that the inhabitants waged against
them. Men and women, boys and girls, blacks and whites, finding that the
devils were invulnerable against rifle fire, sallied forth boldly with
knives and choppers, and laid down a life for a life.

* * * * *

On the second day after their appearance, the main swarm, a trillion and
a half strong, reached the line of the transcontinental railway, and
moved eastward into South Australia, traveling, it was estimated, at the
rate of two hundred miles an hour. By the next morning they were in
Adelaide, a city of nearly a quarter of a million people. By nightfall
every living thing in Adelaide and the suburbs had been eaten, except
for a few who succeeded in hiding in walled-up cellars, or in the
surrounding marshes.

That night the swarm was on the borders of New South Wales and Victoria,
and moving in two divisions toward Melbourne and Sydney.

The northern half, it was quickly seen, was flying "wild," with no
particular objective, moving in a solid cohort two hundred miles in
length, and devouring game, stock, and humans indiscriminately. It was
the southern division, numbering perhaps a trillion, that was under
command of Bram, and aimed at destroying Melbourne as Adelaide had been
destroyed.

Bram, with his eight beetle steeds, was by this time known and execrated
throughout the world. He was pictured as Anti-Christ, and the fulfilment
of the prophecies of the Rock of Revelations.

And all this while--or, rather, until the telegraph wires were
cut--broken, it was discovered later, by perching beetles--Thomas
Travers was sending out messages from his post at Settler's Station.

* * * * *

Soon it was known that prodigious creatures were following in the wake
of the devastating horde. Mantises, fifteen feet in height, winged
things like pterodactyls, longer than bombing airplanes, followed,
preying on the stragglers. But the main bodies never halted, and the
inroads that the destroyers made on their numbers were insignificant.

Before the swarm reached Adelaide the Commonwealth Government had taken
action. Troops had been called out, and all the available airplanes in
the country had been ordered to assemble at Broken Hill, New South
Wales, a strategic point commanding the approaches to Sydney and
Melbourne. Something